Mobile HCI’s (Human Computer Interaction) understanding of mobility can benefit from novel theoretical perspectives that have been largely underexploited. This thesis develops and applies a novel middle range theory for mobile interaction design called mobile interaction trajectories, demonstrating the theory’s use and value in practical design settings. Mobile interaction trajectories offer a new theoretical perspective for mobile interaction design, considering people’s everyday trajectories as a baseline for mediated communication, with foci on practices and experiences of changing states of connectedness, chronologies of mediated communication, and mobile communication routines. Following a research through design methodology, probing was used as a creative research method. Two probing experiments informed the theory’s development. A new Probe resource was designed and applied, called the Hankie Probe. It was used to collect instances of mobile interaction trajectories and informed a range of design workshops. The Hankie Probe is based on a fabric-based format and expresses everyday trajectories, and mobile communication practice and experience via stitched and drawn handmade space-time diaries. Research about design analysed the design processes with the completed Probes revealing the middle range theory’s value. The theory’s distinctive characteristics have shown to inform generative design processes. The trajectory-based perspective inspired design concepts for contextually adaptive services that enable new communication experiences and alter the chronology of social interaction. The thesis contributes to knowledge by underpinning generative design work with novel mobility theories via a new Probe format for mobile interaction design research. The following additional discoveries were made: There are three basic probing functions in generative design workshops; designer’s experiences and subjective interpretation augment insights about users and contexts in design workshops, the fabric-based handmade Probes influenced design work offering a captivating authentic format that requires subjective interpretation.

All learning occurs within a space, whether this space is physical or virtual, but we have limited knowledge of how learning and teaching relate to it, particularly after a learning space’s users engage and adapt with it. A learning space is seen as a third teacher, but there is limited guidance for teachers on how to adapt designed elements of learning spaces. Therefore, this research aimed to empower teachers’ use of learning space without directly involving designers. It did so by sharing redesign opportunities for learning spaces that facilitate learning and teaching. There were three phases to this research: 1) Contextual review using literature review and observation; 2) Understanding learning space use and potential by investigating classroom space through student drawings, social network data, semi structured interviews, classroom photographs, and teachers’ planning books; and 3) Tool and Exemplar development of a supportive tool formed from structured sets of cards for guidance and inspiration. The first phase revealed a gap between what is written about learning in physical spaces and how these are designed. The second phase studied a range of current teachers’ practices to address this gap, and indicated that although teachers are aware of the importance of physical space, they do not always know how to adapt it to facilitate learning. The results also revealed learning space design elements which designers are unaware of, extending the initial framework from the first phase such. Findings from these studies supported design of a tool (third stage) to empower teachers’ use of space to support different learning and teaching approaches. Evaluation showed that the tool can improve teachers’ awareness of learning space design elements, and enable them to adapt space to support different teaching and learning approaches. Thus research helps both initial learning space designs by architects, as well as subsequent redesign by teachers through development of a practical tool.

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This study presents a pedagogic framework that offers a new approach, structure and content for the teaching, understanding and application of typography in cross-media communication environments. Current theory and vocabulary used to describe typographic practice and scholarship are based on a historically print-derived framework. As yet, no new paradigm has emerged to address the divergent path that screen-based typography has taken from its traditional print medium. This study argues that the current model of typographic education is unable to provide design students with appropriate models, concepts and grammar to explore the potential of typography in screen-based media. Hence, a re-evaluation of the current framework is proposed in order to develop new approaches that will reduce misappropriation of typographic principles and aesthetic values in screen-based media. This study is composed of three research stages. Stage One (consisting of a literature and design application review) was used to develop an understanding of the current typographic application in screen-based media. Stage Two (consisting of a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews) was used to investigate the relevance of current typographic knowledge in relation to screen- based media. Additionally, this stage helped identify critical issues surrounding current and future typographic practice. Findings from Stages One and Two were used as a basis to develop a new framework. This framework was subsequently tested and refined in Stage Three through action research projects (with Graphic and New Media design students) and peer reviews (with design educators and professional practitioners). The final framework consists of six key attributes: an integrated model of knowledge, cross-media skills, cross-disciplinary influences, it is communication-focused, flexible and adaptable. It reflects a future model of a convergent media, not a continued separation of print and screen. This framework consists of two distinct areas of knowledge: Global Skills (Form, Content, Expression and Context) and Specialist Skills (Hyper-textuality, Interactivity, Temporality and Usability). It is concluded that the approach and knowledge-base used to teach typography must be modified to reflect the challenges posed by media convergence, where transferable global skills are emphasised across a range of media. Typography's knowledge base has to be expanded to include specialist skills derived from technological and social changes in communication technologies. The principal contributions of the study are: the identification of transferable global typographic skills; the introduction of specialist design skills required for effective cross-media type application; presentation of an integrated model of typographic knowledge and practice; a curriculum guide aimed at helping design educators plan and deliver typography in graphic and multimedia programmes; strategies and approaches to help designers remediate their print- derived knowledge and lastly, as a subject reference guide for visual communication design students. The framework is not offered as an absolute representation of western-based typographic knowledge for cross-media application but instead should be considered as a signpost to help understand the current transition of knowledge between print and screen. Additionally, this framework has been developed and tested within a single educational environment. As a result, variations in teaching and learning styles were not taken into account. Audiences are urged to treat the framework as a 'work-in-progress' model that can be refined through additional field- testing in other educational environments. And finally, the application of the framework within a professional practice environment would require a comprehensive review of practice-based concerns and a further simplification of the framework.

This thesis chronicles the development of Polish Japonisme between 1885 and 1939. It focuses mainly on painting and graphic arts, and selected aspects of photography, design and architecture. Appropriation from Japanese sources triggered the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages which helped forge new art and art educational paradigms that would define the modern age. Starting with Polish fin-de-siècle Japonisme, it examines the role of Western European artistic centres, mainly Paris, in the initial dissemination of Japonisme in Poland, and considers the exceptional case of Julian Fałat, who had first-hand experience of Japan. The second phase of Polish Japonisme (1901-1918) was nourished on local, mostly Cracovian, infrastructure put in place by the ‘godfather’ of Polish Japonisme Feliks Manggha Jasieński. His pro-Japonisme agency is discussed at length. Considerable attention is given to the political incentive provided by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, which rendered Japan as Poland’s ally against its Russian oppressor. The first two decades of the 20th century are regarded as the ‘Renaissance’ of Japonisme in Poland, and it is this part of the thesis that explores Japanese inspirations as manifested in the genres of portraiture, still life, landscape, representations of flora and fauna, erotic imagery, and caricature. Japonisme in graphic and applied graphic arts, including the poster, is also discussed. The existence of the taste for Japanese art in the West after 1918 is less readily acknowledged than that of the preceding decades. The third phase of Polish Japonisme (1919-1939) helps challenge the tacit conviction that Japanese art stopped functioning as an inspirational force around 1918. This part of the thesis examines the nationalisation of heretofore private resources of Japanese art in Cracow and Warsaw, and the inauguration of official cultural exchange between Poland and Japan. Polish Japonisme within École de Paris, both before 1918 and thereafter, inspired mainly by the painting of Foujita Tsuguharu, is an entirely new contribution to the field. Although Japanese inspirations frequently appeared in Polish painting of the interwar period, it was the graphic arts that became most receptive to the Japanese aesthetic at that time. The thesis includes a case study of Leon Wyczółkowski’s interbellum Japonisme, and interprets it as patriotic transpositions of the work of Hiroshige and the Japanese genre of meisho-e. Japonisme in Polish design and architecture is addressed only in the context of the creation of Polish national style in design (1901-1939). Art schools in Britain and America became important centres for Japonisme at the beginning of the 20th century. The thesis considers the case of Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, which due to radical changes introduced by its new director Julian Fałat, became an important centre for the dissemination of the taste for Japanese art in Poland.

An AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award has made collaboration possible between Northumbria University and the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead in providing the opportunity to highlight a significant narrative in craft history. Henry Rothschild, a German émigré, ran the iconic craft outlet Primavera from 1946 to 1980. During this time, he built up an internationally significant collection of ceramics, now housed at the Shipley Art Gallery, along with a personal and business archive. By bringing this inaccessible and underused material to the fore and complementing it with interviews with Rothschild’s contemporaries, connections have emerged that were previously undiscovered. This thesis demonstrated how Rothschild’s position as a retailer, exhibitor and collector marked him as a unique character within the crafts as well as demonstrated the ways in which he utilised his position as an émigré to act outside of the confines of the traditional British standpoint. The narrative of Rothschild has been interwoven into the existing literature on craft in Britain, creating a previously unheard of account of post-war craft. Although Rothschild’s role in the post-war craft world has been remarked upon in a number of texts (Cooper, 2012; Harrod, 1995; Harrod, 1999; Buckley and Hochsherf, 2012) his wide reaching impact and contribution has never been explored in detail. This thesis considered the contradictory nature of Rothschild’s multiple roles and the resulting implications: as a retailer he was motivated to choose pieces that would sell, as an exhibitor he could allow for more creativity and daring in his curatorial choices, and as private collector he enjoyed established relationships with craftspeople. The aim of this thesis was to position Rothschild as collector, exhibitor and retailer not only within the context of British craft, but also to consider how Primavera operated within what David Kynaston calls the ‘justly iconic’ time period from 1945 to 1980 (Kynsaton, 2007). Through both his retail and exhibition activity at Primavera and beyond, craft was given a platform, made accessible to the wider public and influenced taste and fashion. His background as a German Jewish émigré emerged as key to understanding how he negotiated his position within this world. The resulting thesis confirmed and elucidated the significance of Rothschild and Primavera and called for further research into those individuals who are very much of the craft world but not always as producers or educators. As demonstrated here, such examinations have the potential to offer a narrative which is both complementary and challenging to those which dominate, and thereby contribute to the discourse on the nature of narrative based research and craft history.

With this thesis I want to share my exploration of pulse and rhythm as elements of design. I locate my research on the meeting point of two different contexts: one is the expansion of kinetic art into design projects, resulting in aesthetic use of motion playing wider roles in design, and the other is the expansion, in relation to technological development, of the value of pulse as a design element. My hypothesis is that the value of pulse as an element of design can be heightened by acquiring the aesthetic use of repetitive motion seen in kinetic art, forging emotional communication with viewers/users. The mission of this research is to demonstrate this argument through practice, collecting working ideas and methods. I propose a model of pulse which can be used as a tool to reflect on projects from a new perspective. To forge a workable focus for the research, I articulate a definition of Japanese aesthetics and deploy related criteria of design. My exploration covers three topics - single pulse, pulse synchronisation, and pulse interference. Several ideas and methods were tested across eight projects in total, related to theories from various fields including biology, physiology, psychology, philosophy, mathematics and physics, and inspired by art and design practice. The insights gained from the projects allowed me to expand the scope of the exploration from pulse to rhythm, and I also reflect on my work from this perspective, distinguishing rhythm from pulse. Furthermore, I conducted an interview-based study to look into rhythm inferred from non-pulsing motions, and the insights from the interviews are presented in the thesis with an additional discussion. The output of the research takes two forms: recommendations, as a simpliflied and generalised summary of my findings, and case studies (projects), as a concrete source of inspiration for the reader's own creations. By thus interweaving the practical and theoretical knowledge gained in the research, I believe this work provides a useful contribution to the field of design.

This thesis explores the ability of data visualisation to enable knowl-edge discovery in digital collections. Its emphasis lies on time-based visualisations, such as timelines. Although timelines are among the earliest examples of graphical renderings of data, they are often used merely as devices for linear storytelling and not as tools for visual analysis. Investigating this type of visualisation reveals the particular challenges of digital timelines for scholarly research. In addition, the intersection between the key issues of time-wise visualisation and digital collections acts as a focal point. Departing from authored temporal descriptions in collections data, the research examines how curatorial decisions influence collec-tions data and how these decisions may be made manifest in timeline visualisations. The thesis contributes a new understanding of the knowledge embedded in digital collections and provides practical and conceptual means for making this knowledge accessible and usable. The case is made that digital collections are not simply represen-tations of physical archives. Digital collections record not only what is known about the content of an archive. Collections data contains traces of institutional decisions and curatorial biases, as well as data related to administrative procedures. Such ‘hidden data’ – information that has not been explicitly recorded, but is nevertheless present in the dataset – is crucial for drawing informed conclusions from dig-itised cultural collections and can be exposed through appropriately designed visualisation tools. The research takes a practice-led and collaborative approach, work-ing closely with cultural institutions and their curators. Functional prototypes address issues of visualising large cultural datasets and the representation of uncertain and multiple temporal descriptions that are typically found in digital collections. The prototypes act as means towards an improved understanding of and a critical engagement with the time-wise visualisation of col-lections data. Two example implementations put the design principles that have emerged into practice and demonstrate how such tools may assist in knowledge discovery in cultural collections. Calls for new visualisation tools that are suitable for the purposes of humanities research are widespread in the scholarly community. However, the present thesis shows that gaining new insights into digital collections does not only require technological advancement, but also an epistemological shift in working with digital collections. This shift is expressed in the kind of questions that curators have started seeking to answer through visualisation. Digitisation requires and affords new ways of interrogating collections that depart from putting the collected artefact and its creator at the centre of human-istic enquiry. Instead, digital collections need to be seen as artefacts themselves. Recognising this leads curators to address self-reflective research questions that seek to study the history of an institution and the influence that individuals have had on the holdings of a collection; questions that so far escaped their areas of research.

No description available.

A computerised cost estimating system, which can be used for making preliminary estimates of fixed capital investment of process plants, has been developed. The contituents of the system are (1) a cost calculating routine, COSMOD, compatible with existing modular executive programs, such as GEMCS, (2) an equipment data base, and (3) an equipment catalogue. The following are the significant characteristics of the cost estimating system.It has flexibility. It can be used as an independent cost estimating system, or as part of a modular executive-aided computer program. As part of an executive aided system, it may be used as a subroutine to a 'module* or 'unit computation', or as a 'module' or 'unit computation' itself. It will estimate the cost of one or more equipment but is capable of accepting costs generated external to itself. It requires relatively little computer space and time. The COSMOD program is concise and efficient. Its common block requirements in executive-aided systems is small. It adds little to the cost or time of running equipment design cases on the computer. It has access to a large quantity of data on equipment costs. Its data base contains cost information on nearly 300 different types of equipment, ensuring satisfactory fulfilment of its varying and often complex data requirements. The data are organised in a multiple record, random access file. This allows direct access to the equipment data of interest. It also allows easy addition, deletion or change to the data on file. An equipment catalogue is provided for the user. It provides information about the equipment whose cost data are available in COSMOD*s data file, and serves as a guide for the user in selecting and in providing data required by COSMOD. In conclusion, this work makes available, complete with cost estimating data and equipment catalogue, a preliminary capital cost estimating system, the absence of which has discouraged or impeded economic evaluations in plant design studies on the computer. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)